Getting started in Mac Development; No Mac.... What Do?!

Question

Possible Duplicate:
How can I develop for iPhone using a Windows development machine?

Hi folks,

With all the RDF et al around King Jobs' newest glass beermat, I'm getting the feeling that its a good time to add the 'iphone/ipad developer' string to my bow.

One problem (two if you count not being in a financial position to slap down $1000+ for a mac) ; I am a PC head, specifically a Linux-head, and have no regular access to a Mac platform to develop on.

I cannot see any way of getting my hands on iSDK without being on a Mac, (but have been known to be wrong)

How hopeless is my plight and where can I go from here?

UPDATE: The device and development space has completely changed in the year since the supposed exact duplicate question was asked(also, I'm talking about developing on linux, basically a kissing cousin to OSX, not windows, and hoped that there would be more open-source cross-over)

Anyway, after receiving great answers, I'm thinking get 2nd hand mac mini, fire it away on a shelf somewhere with a network connection, remote desktop to is from the desktop, and VPN to if from my laptop if im on the move.

Answer 1

Hackintosh perhaps?

Answer 2

As long as you have an intel processor, you should be able to run the Mac OS under VMWare (or your VM software of choice). At $30, it shouldn't be hard to foot the bill.

Going that route, worst case you can buy yourself more RAM and whatever software you need to make things work.

Answer 3

I think if you want to do iPad/iPhone development, you are going to need to buy a Mac. I have always worked on PCs and getting into iPhone development pushed me into picking up a MacBook.

The laptop has paid for itself in app sales and is the nicest piece of hardware I have owned. I recommend you take the plunge.

Answer 4

It all boils down to how much you value your time. Although you can go the Hackintosh route - and if you are a tinkerer - you may have a lot of fun getting it up and running. However, based on my experience the value of the number of extra hours you would spend tinkering to get OSX and your development tools working smoothly on a PC would quickly exceeded the value of the money you could make actually developing on you're newly purchased machine.

If I were in your shoes, I would just bite the bullet and buy the MAc, or even better line up an iPhone/iPad contract that could pay you enough in advance to buy the machine.

Answer 5

Get a used mac mini on eBay. They should be fairly cheap and will be sufficient for iPad/iPhone development.

Answer 6

I got a Mac Mini fairly cheaply (compared to other Macs).

It runs Xcode fine.

Answer 7

I told myself: "first you have to earn money as iPohne developper and then you will buy a Mac" The solution for me was iDeneb Lite, because it's the only "patched" OSX version compatible with the sdk installation requirements (OSX version > 1.5.8). You have to install it with a dual boot and hope it's compatible with your hardware. The only way to download it it's via torrent. The other, reliable, and simplest way it's buy a Mini Mac as Alex told.

Answer 8

At some point you're going to need the appropriate device (mac/iphone/ipad) to develop on if you want to call yourself a developer of that platform type.

But before then you can start by learning Objective-C.

http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/Objective-C_2.0_Essentials

Chapter 5 is about installing the Objective-C compiler on Linux (Ubuntu specifically) but there are other chapters for Windows and Mac.

Answer 9

Well, if you are looking into getting into the mobile app space, then you might want to consider Android Development, since the SDK is freely available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. If you want to develop for Mac OS X, but not necessarily the iPhone, cross-platform toolkits such as the Qt Framework are available. Also, Mac OS X has excellent builtin support for Java, so you could just write platform-independent Java code and have it work on the Mac. Now, if you are absolutely determined to use Objective-C and Cocoa to create native Mac OS X applications or Objective-C and CocoaTouch to create iPhone applications, then the best option is probably to get a Mac. That said, there are open source alternatives (such as winChain and GNUStep), although they are not likely to be as good or reliable, and so you would probably need to get an actual Mac or iPhone, anyway, to verify that what you develop works.

I should add that, despite all the excitement about the iPad (the beer mat as you said), there are many companies that are releasing or going to release their own slate-like computers. And you should also take into consideration the fact that Apple doesn't treat developers very nicely when deciding which platform to target; an HP slate running Android and a Google slate running Android, plus an increasingly large number of Android phones and other devices make it a viable alternative to what Apple is selling.

Answer 10

my path: Hackintosh (when time does not worth much) -> MacBook Air (for portability)

and don't ignore the cost of buying iPhone, iPad, newer iPhones ;-)

IMO, the h/w cost can be well paid off for one or two freelance projects.